


Forgotten History

by Rose_Icosahedron



Category: Hermitcraft RPF, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, I have no idea what genere this is, Watcher Grian, and sickness in later chapters, and some ocs - Freeform, but nothing graphic, herobrine Xisuma, lots of particpation from the watchers, multiple plotlines but i swear they all conect in the end, some violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:34:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 11,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26588950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rose_Icosahedron/pseuds/Rose_Icosahedron
Summary: X is herobrine and perpetually scared of the watchers repeated attempts to remove him from existence. After the nether update Grian gets a visit from the watchers, Cleo starts acting strange and both X and Cleo start both having these weird dreams that almost seem more like memories.
Comments: 61
Kudos: 142





	1. New Files

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> X worries about the update.

X: new files

Xisuma fiddled with his hands as the server access panel booted up. He found something nerve wracking about updating the server. For any other admin, an update was exciting, or at least routine, but for X the process was quite different. Nothing bad had come with the past few updates and that made it worse. The next attack from the watchers was due.  
X didn't understand what the watchers had against him; he hadn't done anything to upset them, not for decades, and most of what he had done was experimentation. Besides, if someone had come and told him not to use the reality-bending powers he had spawned in with he would have listened, probably.  
X was interrupted from his train of thought as the panel beeped, showing that the update was ready. He tapped the panel to allow the update. A flash of light engulfed the server as the update processed  
Blinking, X looked around. Everything seemed fine, so maybe it was just an overreaction. Of course it was the nether update, so he might just spontaneously combust when he entered the nether. Not that anything the watchers had tried had worked. It was a one-sided war of attrition, though neither side was really winning or being worn down.   
“I should stop overthinking things.” Xisuma said aloud as he turned to the stairs out into the shopping district.

X arrived into the shopping district to see a group of the hermits gathered outside the mayoral building; as he approached he heard Grian talking to False and Jevin  
“You know guys, I would really love to do this, but something just came up.”  
“What?” False exclaimed “you’ve just been standing here, how could something come up?”  
“I just remembered, maybe you guys could find another teammate?” Grian looked around and noticed X “HEY XISUMA! THE HERMITS ARE PLAYING NETHER BINGO, YOU’RE ON JEVIN AND FALSE’S TEAM!” Grian ran past X, shoving a bingo board and marker in his hand.  
“I didn’t agree to this, Grian!” X called after the escaping gremlin. X sighed.  
“You don't have to play if you don't want to, Cleo and Beef are on a two-person team,” False said, moving towards X.  
“No, It's fine. I don’t have anything planned this afternoon anyway.” X said, looking down at the bingo sheet. Once X entered the nether almost every shred of worry dissipated (not that he had found it likely that the watchers had set him to spontaneously ignite, but anything was possible) and his poring over the update data had proven useful, as his team found themselves winners of the bingo game.

“ Do you guys wanna eat dinner together or something to celebrate?” False asked.  
“ Good idea,” said Jevin. “What about you, X?” X shook his head, pointing to his helmet.  
“ That sounds lovely, but I can't take my helmet off, and I want to go check up on Gria. It's Probably nothing, but he did really seem in a hurry.”  
“Ah” False nodded. “Stress owes me a favor; I'll ask her to leave some of whatever she makes for us at your base.”  
“Thanks.” X nodded and turned to fly away.

____________________

X landed at Grian’s base wondering where to look for the small hermit. Grian’s base was giant, towering almost as large as a mountain over the surrounding jungle, even though it was nowhere close to complete. The stairs up to the door were at least two stories tall, and the door was made out of multiple logs like a castle gate. X walked up to the door and knocked loudly. To be honest, it was closer to punching the door than knocking, hoping that the sound would somehow reach Grian if he was inside.  
Minutes passed, and just as X was about to leave the door swung open to reveal Grian, who was holding a notebook, with a pencil tucked behind his ear.  
“Oh hey X, whatcha doing here? Did you win bingo?”  
“Uh, yeah we did, but that's not really the point,” X responded. Grian tilted his head.  
“What's that?”  
“You ran off pretty quickly this afternoon. I was wondering if you were okay?”  
“Oh, uh…” Grian hesitated “I had to feed my cat.”   
“You had to… feed your cat?”  
“Yeah” Maui peeked through the door and curled around Grian’s leg, purring.  
“I'm glad you're okay, Grian. If you ever have to run off like that again, please tell us why. I was worried.”  
“Sorry to make you worry. I’ll tell you next time.” Grian apologized. X smiled and hugged Grian.  
“It's fine, see you around.” X patted Grian on the shoulder and flew off into the evening sky. Grian coughed a bit from breathing in the smoke left behind from the rockets X used to take off, then he closed the door.  
“That was close.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ohmyireneitsfinalydoneipostedmywritingontheinternet.
> 
> ive allways had tons of fanfic ideas, but ive never written them before, let alone share them, and im exited.  
> thanks to my beta reader @violetta-mondarev on tumblr, i can wait to see how this goes
> 
> (im @Ruby-Icosaheadron on tumblr if you wanna check out the other stuff i do)


	2. Paper and ink

Grian stood in the shopping district, hand in his pocket, when the server updated. For some reason, most people aren't bothered by the flash of an update -- some didn't even notice it -- but Grian was still left blinking when it happened. He turned back to False, ready to continue their conversation when he felt something in his pocket that definitely had not been there before.  _ Huh. _ He moved his fingers around the object, trying to get a feel for it before removing it from his pocket, but before he could do that he froze. He moved his hand around it and was fairly sure it was a letter (objects that don't tend to get lost in pockets) then he felt the seal. It was simple, with a strange lack of imperfections or droplets, but the symbol was very familiar. He would recognize it anywhere; it was the symbol of the watchers. Grian removed his hand from his pocket

“You know guys, I would love to do this but something just came up.”

“What?” False exclaimed “you’ve just been standing here. How could something come up?”

“I just remembered. Maybe you guys could find another team mate?” Grian looked around and noticed X who had just come up from the server access panel. “HEY XISUMA! THE HERMITS ARE PLAYING NETHER BINGO, YOU;RE ON JEVIN AND FALSE’S TEAM!” Grian ran past X, shoving a bingo board and marker in his hand.

“ I didn’t agree to this, Grian!” X shouted as Grian took off, flying away from the shopping district as fast as he could. He landed at the foot of his base, and looked around before pulling the letter out of his pocket. 

The letter was simple. The envelope was just light enough to be considered grey, with simple golden trim. The wax making the seal was cyan and shimmered in the afternoon light. He cracked open the envelope, and found that the letter itself smelled strongly of old paper and libraries, despite the fact that the materials used in its construction had probably only existed for less than an hour. Opening it up, the letter was made out of white paper, and written in black ink.

Dear Red,

We wish to request your presence, as the most recent update has revealed a rather worrying matter that we would like to make you aware of. We have seen the recurrence of an anomaly that was previously deemed removed in the server that you currently use as a residence. While we are aware of our agreement not to affect you or your world, we have deemed this a matter that could put you and your way of life in jeopardy and that therefore you should be made aware.

  
(it was marked with the broken square symbols at the bottom in orange, green, blue, and black)  
  


Grian paused, looking at the approximate signatures. He couldn't remember the last time Black had felt the need to contact Grian in any manner. Thinking about it, they probably hadn’t since he’d left, and the fact Black felt the need to contact him worried Grian. Putting the letter back into his pocket, Grian began to walk quickly towards his storage system to find some portal materials.

Grian walked through his base to the room that, by his estimates, was the one farthest from the front door in the entire mansion to construct the portal. He really didn't want anyone to come across it while it was active. The room itself was fairly large, with only a rug for furniture. It almost looked abandoned despite the fact that it was only a few months old. Approaching the wall, Grian pulled out the obsidian and began to construct the broken portal frame. Under any other person’s understanding a portal like this should not light, yet when Grian brought a flint and steel to the frame, it lit with a crimson glow. He held his breath in anticipation, before entering the portal.

__________________

Grian stepped out of the portal into a large hall. The floor was made of marble and so were the walls and vaulted ceiling, except for the portals lining the walls, which shimmered different colors, one portal for each dye color (or watcher). One wall was occupied by an enormous archway, which led to an even grander hall. Red runes appeared from the ground and swirled around Grian’s feet as he stepped on the marble floor. The runes began to swirl higher around Grian’s legs, coalescing into cloth.When Grian reached the other side of the room, he was wearing a different outfit entirely.

Four figures stood in front of Grian, waiting for him. They all turned their heads to face him as he entered despite the fact they all wore visors over their eyes, obstructing their vision.

“Greetings, Red.”  Blue spoke. A faint smile of fondness played across their face. Grian nodded faintly in acknowledgment as he stared at the ground, avoiding looking at the watchers. He fidgeted with the cuff of his sleeve. 

“You do not have anything to be afraid of, not from us, Red.”  Orange said. They stepped towards Grian, placing one of their hands on his shoulder, and using the other to tilt his head up.

_ Click. _ Black tapped their foot on the ground, getting Grian’s attention. “You want to know why you are here.”

“Well, I-” Grian paused in his retort. “Yeah, yeah I do.” Black made no acknowledgement to Grian, instead they gestured to Orange, who promptly stepped back in line with the other watchers.

“ To put it simply, Red, we believe Herobrine has taken residence on your server.”

“What? I thought you had dealt with him a long time ago.”

“We thought we had, but there is something we cant see on your server, and Herobrine has evaded us before.” Green explained.

“What if… what if it’s not?” Grian asked nervously.

“If it is, which is unlikely, then we have no reason to fear as there is no way something new has been created, and it must have existed for quite a long time without causing problems.”

“What do you want me to do?” Black looked at Grian, seemingly focusing all of their attention solely on him. It was quite unnerving to say the least.

“We thought that you should look for Herobrine yourself. Our previous attempts have all failed so we decided on a change of tactics.” Black then reached into a pocket on their jacket and produced a red crystal earring, the one Grian had placed his power in a long time ago.

“You could potentially run into danger. You should have this.” they pushed the earring into Grian’s hand.

“We know you left us for a reason, and we aren't asking you to come back, but we cannot fix this problem. You made us promise not to interfere with your world, and we will not, except for your own safety.” Blue explained. With that Black snapped their fingers and the four watchers disappeared in swirls of colored runes leaving Grian standing alone in the room. He looked around, pale grey light streaming in from giant windows, and the earring glowing faintly in his hand. As he stepped back towards the portals the clothes that the room had given him dissolved back into runes, leaving him in his normal outfit. He slid the earring into his pocket and stepped through the portal.

__________________

  
  


Grian stepped back into his mansion, closing the portal behind him. As he walked through his house his mind began to wander. How could Herobrine be on the server? Surely X would have noticed if someone was on the server aside from the hermits, wouldn't he? Although he wasn’t exactly sure what Herobrine could do? Was it possible that he was one of the hermits? That thought scared Grian, but it made sense how one could stay in hiding like that. Sighing, Grian reached for a notebook and pencil. If he was going to do an investigation, he was going to do it properly.

Walking through his mansion, Grian heard a loud knock on the door. Huh. He walked to the front of his house and opened the door to see X in the doorway.

“Oh hey X, whatcha doing here? Did you win bingo?” 

“Uh, yeah we did, but that's not really the point,” X responded. Grian tilted his head.

“What's that?”

“You ran off pretty quickly this afternoon. I was wondering if you were okay?”

“Oh, uh…” Grian hesitated “I had to feed my cat.” 

“You had to… feed your cat?”

“Yeah” Maui peeked through the door and curled around Grian’s leg, purring.

“I'm glad you're okay, Grian. If you ever have to run off like that again, please tell us why. I was worried.”

“Sorry to make you worry. I’ll tell you next time.” Grian apologized. X smiled and hugged Grian.

“It's fine, see you around.” X patted Grian on the shoulder and flew off into the evening sky. Grian coughed a bit from breathing in the smoke left behind from the rockets X used to take off, then he closed the door.

“That was close.” Grian could barely believe that X had believed that, although thinking about it, he  _ had _ forgotten to feed Maui. So, he hadn’t technically lied.


	3. Access Code and Dreams

Cleo: 

Cleo walked out of the nether portal, brushing ash off her pants. The bingo game had been fun, and she didn't get to hang out with Beef much. Not that she was really trying to win -- they were the only two person team, and being undead she was a bit more flammable than the other hermits. Speaking of which, the stitches holding on her left arm were mostly ash at this point, and her arm might fall off in front of the few hermits that were hanging in the shopping district (not that she minded them seeing her arm fall off, but she didn't want to ruin the moment, an certainly didn't want to be asked about where she got new arms). She began to run towards the beach, building up momentum before she could rocket up into the evening sky.  
Landing at her base, she pushed through the door before her arm fell off. Sighing, she picked up her arm and threw it in the nearby composter. If she wanted to, she could probably keep the arm for another month or so, but it wasn’t really worth it, not when she had a basically infinite supply. She walked down into her storage room, and walked to one corner of the room that was made of cobblestone and entered the passcode into the hidden panel, revealing an elevator down to the lab under her base. The elevator moved down to her lab. It was large, with hallways leading every direction and probably the most well staffed lab on the whole server, if 30 clones of Joe Hills and one zombie named Carol count as a workforce. As Cleo stepped out into the hall she was greeted by a joe hills, who was wearing a simple lab uniform, with a pin on his coat: 021. He looked at her, noting the lack of a left arm.  
“Howdy Cleo, should I have the lab start growing a new arm?” Cleo considered a bit.  
“Isn't it your job to make sure there are always new body parts in stock?”  
“Yes, so I should get started on that-- you're giving me a look.” Then there was a look of realization in 21’s eyes. “Aw man, I just got this arm 2 months ago.”  
“You can keep it this time.” Cleo promised. 21 pulled out a clipboard out of his inventory, and wrote something down before walking off  
“I’ll send you a message when I've got an arm for you.” Cleo walked down the hall to the room listed on the map as “ Cleo’s office” but it was more of a lounge or living room. It was even connected to a small kitchen, not that Cleo cooked anything. She opened the fridge, which was almost entirely full of bottles of enchanting (well really, but they were bottles of xp). She pulled one out. Cleo wasn’t a zombie, not strictly anyway; she just looked like one, and there wasn’t a better word for it. The main difference between what she was and zombies was she didn’t eat people; she ate xp. She lived off it. As to why, Cleo never knew.  
Cleo moved to the kitchen and pulled out a large mug into which she put the contents of the bottle of xp, some boiling water, and a tea bag. After stirring it, she sat down in an armchair with her beverage, lamenting her lack of an arm, as she could not read a book while she sat. Cleo did not get tired often -- she could go for a week without needing to sleep -- yet despite the fact she had slept the day before she began to drift off to sleep.

Dreams:

Kiaro sat in a room. It was something like a study -- the walls were lined with bookshelves and a few chairs sat around a coffee table in the middle. She didn't really want to be here. She had lessons to plan, and she had very little free time these days, but here she was, forced to go and meet her cousin Liam’s fiance’s family. Forced wasn't really the right word, but her entire family had been begging her to at least show up for the last two weeks, and she had had to agree to it just to get some peace and quiet , now she was sitting in a study in a house she had never been in before, and doubted she would visit for quite some time, working on lesson plans.  
The door opened and a man stepped in. He wore a teal t-shirt, jeans, and a rather formal gold, white, and black jacket. He had tan skin which was peppered with freckles, curly dark brown hair that was pulled back in a ponytail and solid black eyes that seemed to glow, despite the impossibility of anything glowing black.  
“Hey” he said. Kiaro continued to work on the lesson plans.  
“Uhh, my name's Void.” Void offered. He walked over to the book shelves and began to look over them.  
“Boring, boring, already read that, read that, boring.”  
“Are you judging books as boring just by looking at their spine?” Kiaro inquired. Void laughed at that.  
“No, it’s a seer thing; I can see the basic content of a book.”  
“That seems like an oddly specific power.”  
“I guess it is. What's your name, by the way?”  
“Kiaro.” Kiaro moved to put her papers on the coffee table.

Cleo:

Cleo suddenly awoke, her hand placed on the table, as if she had just put something down on it. She sat up and looked around the room. Joe 21 stood in the doorway holding an arm, a needle, and some string.  
“I have your arm.” He smiled a bit as he placed the arm and string down on the table. Cleo picked up the objects and began to sew the arm on. 21 turned to leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually made a bit of art for this one https://rose-icosahedron.tumblr.com/post/631697368408064001/a-drawing-i-made-for-the-most-recent-chapter-of-my


	4. Flowers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stress and Grian chat

Grian:

Grian sat against his front door, wondering what to do next. Herobrine could be anyone, anywhere, not excluding the other hermits, and he needed to figure out if it was one of them. He sat contemplating this. He didn't know very much about a fair portion of the hermits… he didn’t know very much about the other hermits, but he had lived on the same server with them for what? Three years? He could go ask them about their pasts. It would at least give him something to start with. Grian stepped outside into the evening air. nThe sun hung low in the sky.  
“Oi Grian, could I have your help?” Stress was standing in what could be considered Grian’s yard, but was really just the grass around the foot of his mansion.  
“Uh, what do you need?” Grian called down to her as he walked down the stairs.  
“Could you lend me some rockets? I was going to deliver the chicken pie to Xisuma, but I ran out, and his base is kind of high. IfI had to go back to my base then it would be cold by the time it got there.”  
“Oh yeah, sure.” Grian pulled out 20 rockets and handed them to Stress.  
“Thank you.” Stress pausd, thinking. “Have you had dinner?”  
“No, I haven’t.”  
“Then why don't you come and have dinner with me? I have pies,” Stress offered.  
“Uh, sure, thanks actually”  
“Then come on luv.” Stress smiled then took off into the dimming sky. Grian followed her.

As it turned out, Stress does not have a dining room but, rather, one main room that functioned as a kitchen, living room, and dining room, taking up the top floor of the giant skull Stress lived in. Grian sat down at the dinner table. Is top surface was square and made of oak, but the legs were made of spruce wood.  
“What would you like to drink, Grian?” Stress called from the direction of the refrigerator.  
“Do you have apple juice? If you don't, water is fine.” Stress walked back and forth, setting the table. It turned out she did indeed have apple juice. Stress set down the main course, a chicken pie. There were poppy seeds sprinkled on top, and it smelled of chicken and pie crust and onions. Stress served Grian before she served herself.  
“Thanks for having me, Stress.”  
“Your welcome, Grian. Besides, someone needs to eat the four pies I made.”  
“It is good pie, but why did you make four?”  
“Well,” Stress paused, taking a sip of her drink. “I owed False, and she asked me to make dinner for her and Jevin and X because they won the bingo game, and I got kind of carried away.”  
“And made four chicken pies?” Grian asked.  
“Well, I also made 24 sweet berry and honey muffins”  
“Ah.”  
“Yeah.” There was a moment of silence between the two. “So what did you do before you joined hermitcraft?”  
“What?”  
“I mean you didn't just pop into existence in front of X, you had a life before you joined.”  
“Oh yeah um…” Grian mentaly scrambled for something he could tell her. I'm a watcher. I was the fifteenth being in existence, and I have spent the majority of my existence playing god. I probably helped create you even though I don't remember it. “I spawned in my own world, spent a few years having build competitions with my friends, tried to run a server, it ended, and then I met X.” That was at least all true, even if it wasn’t the full story. Stress looked at Grian for a bit.  
“What were your friends like?”  
“Uh, nice? I mean it's been a while. My best friend was named Taurtis. He was really funny, but I doubt I had the best standards at the time. We spent just as much of our time together building as being idiots.” Grian chuckled a bit at the fond memories “I haven't seen him in years.”  
“Sounds nice.”  
“It was. What about you? You're the one asking all the questions.” Grian responded. Stress reached into a small wooden box that was sitting on the edge of the table and pulled out a handful of dried rose petals, one of which she popped in her mouth. She chewed and swallowed before speaking.  
“Well my mom is both a nature spirit and a witch. One day she got lonely and made me with magic.” Stress’s palm started to glow. “She’s great. She can be completely and utterly terrifying if you get on her bad side, but…” the petals in Stress’s hand began to glow and change from dried back to fresh as if they had just been plucked off a flower.  
“She's also amazing and kind and talented…” the petals began to float. “ and I got some magic from her.” With this, the petals began to float through the air as if carried by a strong wind. They floated up and circled around Grian’s head before floating away and out a window into the sunset. Grian and Stress stared at the petals as they disappeared.  
“I'm jealous.”  
“What of my powers? They’re not as—” Grian cut her off.  
“Fun as they seem at first. Yeah, I know, that's not what i'm jealous of.”  
“Oh?”  
“I'm jealous of having a mom, of getting to grow up, of not having responsibilities just thrust upon you by the world.”  
“It didn’t sound like you had very many responsibilities when you spawned in.”  
“More than you would think.”  
“Do you want some of my muffins, luv?”  
“Yeah that would be nice. Besides, I don't think I would have a choice. You could send a flock of rose petals to get me.”  
“Don't be insulting. It would be a flock of wither rose petals.” 

On his walk home Grian began to think. Stress may have weird powers, but there was no way she was herobrine. And if by some conspiracy of the universe against him she was (well “they were” would probably be more appropriate if that was the case) it wouldn’t be a problem. He should write that down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this the same day I finished the last chapter, so its been sitting in my google doc for two weeks. I have not used my extra time well.


	5. Journal and Dreams pt.2

X: 

Xisuma’s base was built sort of like a vault in a way, one designed to protect Xisuma’s identity. The main rooms were enclosed, with no windows, only skylights, many of which were partially covered with leaves. Xisuma sat at his dining table, writing in his journal. It was written in a language that anyone who didn't know galactic would mistake for galactic, Xisuma had never met anyone who could read or speak it; he had just woken up knowing it. There was a sense of safety in knowing that anything he wrote would never be discovered by anyone. The late afternoon light shone through the skylights, illuminating the room with golden light. Quiet piano music played from a jukebox in the corner of the room.  
Someone rang the doorbell. The sound of a bell echoed through the base. Xisuma closed his journal, picked up his helmet, and went to answer the door. Stress stood at the door holding a box. Grian was standing behind her. Stress handed the box to X.  
“Hey X, here’s your food.”  
“Thank you.” X took the box. “Where are you two off to?”  
“Grian gave me some rockets ‘cause I ran out, and I invited him to dinner since he hadn't had any.”  
“Well then, you two should get going.” X said, smiling before closing the door. X walked through his base back to the main room and placed the box on the table. He took off his helmet and placed it on the coffee table, then sat down at the dining table. Before he ate, he went to his room and took off his suit, so he was wearing the undershirt and pants he wore under his armor.

After dinner Xisuma cleaned up then moved across the main room to the piano in the corner. It had keys made of quartz and obsidian, and the main body was made of maroon stained jungle wood. Xisuma had picked up many trades over the years, including multiple instruments, including the piano. He flipped through the book of sheet music he had written in the past, settled on a song, and began to play. Xisuma had played the same song hundreds of times, so when he played it his mind began to wander, mulling the events of the day over and over again in his head, and thinking of what tomorrow may bring. Xisuma found playing the piano rather relaxing (he found most instruments relaxing to play if he played the right song), which was nice after the relative stress of the day. After a while X decided it was time to turn in for the night.  
He sat in his room. It had one large one-way window. It had taken him a while to figure out that, overlooking the jungle, he could see the lights of Keralis’s base in the distance. His bed was in one corner of the room with a chest right next to it. X didn’t quite realise how tired he was till he got into bed and fell asleep almost immediately.

Dreams (pt2):

Void was In his family home, Relatives and talked about something, he didn't know what, and as much as he tried to care, he couldn't. He was given very few days off. Even if he spent most of his time alone in a lab, able to do whatever he pleased, that wasn’t time off, that was taking a break when he wasn’t supposed to. He chose to go disappear into the family study. There was probably something in there that would make for an interesting read. When he entered the room, Void was quite surprised to see someone in there. A woman, probably in her twenties, with fair skin, green eyes, and auburn hair that had been forced into a rather messy braid. She wore black pants and a wine-colored long sleeve shirt. Her shoes were placed on the floor and a brown cardigan was placed over the back of the arm chair she sat in. Her knees were pulled up into the chair and she was using them as a makeshift desk as she worked on something on a few sheets of paper.   
“Hey,” Void said. The woman continued to work with the papers.  
“Uhh, my name's Void.” Void offered. He walked over to the book shelves and began to look over the books. Looking over them he noticed that it was one of the most bland collections of books he had ever seen in one place. Rudimentary physics books that covered stuff he had been aware of for years, murder mysteries with reaveals so predictible that they basically screamed it.   
“Boring, boring, already read that, read that, boring.”  
“Are you judging books as boring just by looking at their spine?” the woman inquired. Void laughed at that.  
“No, it’s a seer thing; I can see the basic content of a book.” And so much more than that, he thought to himself. He remembered quite well the day he had gotten powers, how he had looked at everything, seeing what had once been secret to him, now showing those things plainly and simply.  
“That seems like an oddly specific power.”  
“I guess it is. What's your name, by the way?”  
“Kiaro.” Kiaro placed her papers on the coffee table, moving her feet off of the chair. Void gave up on finding an interesting book, and opted to sit down in a chair across from Kiaro. Void glanced down at the papers for a few seconds before looking back at Kiaro.   
“So, are you a teacher?”  
“How do you know that? Is that a seer thing too, you can tell someone's profession from looking at them?”  
“I saw the contents of the papers you were working on. I wouldn’t go looking around someone’s head like that.”  
“But you would go around seeing the contents of any piece of paper with words on it?” Kiaro sounded a bit offended.  
“I can’t really turn it off. You can't stop reading words when you see them or stop understanding something someone says.”  
“That actually sounds...” Kiaro hesitated for a bit. ``Kind of inconvenient.”  
“It can be.”  
“So what do you do for a living? What sort of special all important government role do you have?”  
“Actually I'm an engineer.” After that there was a bit of silence.  
“I thought all of you seers were government officials and stuff.” she seemed genuinely puzzled.  
“Well, we aren't.”  
“How does an engineer end up becoming a seer? I wouldn’t think it would be particularly useful for that field.”  
“It’s more useful than you would think. As to how I ended up as a seer, I just got really ridiculously good grades. I was one of three people graduating from university five years ago who ended up becoming seers from that.” Void explained. After this there was a pause in the conversation.  
“It might not be your area of expertise, but I've had this project I've been working on for a while. I was wondering if you could help me with it.”  
“Oh?”  
“I'm trying to clone bananas. There's a bit I have been getting stuck on.”  
“That actually sounds pretty interesting. If you could tell me more about it, I might have some ideas.”

Hours later when Kiaro and Void's families came looking for them because it was dinner time, they found Kiaro and Void having an intricate conversation about how one could use photosynthesis to power robotic prosthetics. Papers were spread across the table with all kinds of notes, Void had found a white board from somewhere, which was covered in diagrams discussing how one could create a robotic banana plant. Even though dinner the two continued talking, and by the end of dinner despite efforts to include the two in the conversation and not let them have paper at the table, Void had a working diagram of how one could conceivably make photosynthesizing prosthetic limbs so efficient that the user would theoretically only have to eat two thirds of the necessary calorie intake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this one was a bit late, also, kiaro and void nerding out went through this thought process: cloning bananas. wouldn't robotic ones be more efficient, photosynthesizing actually is a good way to power robotics that are outside, what about photosynthesizing prosthetics? those get sun right?
> 
> Xisuma's Journal entry: https://rose-icosahedron.tumblr.com/post/632898638630223872/the-next-chapter-of-my-fic-comes-out-tomorrow-but


	6. Dna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose_Icosaheadron learns alot about how to stay in love with an idea while taking three weeks to write a filler chapter about doc and ren's backstories.  
> also a bit of world lore: creepers are moss creatures that sprout white flowers/buds from their skin when agitated, that with increase in pressure until... boom!  
> also scars are left by injuries that were not the cause of death, and how severe and how long the stay is proportional to the size of the injury, both mentally/emotionally and physically.  
> (also minor trigger warning for um, spontaneous human explosion and minor descriptions of the aftermath of that)

Grian:  
Grian flew aimlessly around the server, unsure of his next course of action. He probably should have asked Stress if she had seen anything weird recently. While it was unlikely that she had, that would have been something. At least his certainty that he didn't need to worry about Stress was something. He found that he had looped back on himself, and was now coming up on Ren's base. He landed to see a tent that had been constructed near Ren’s house, voices came from inside it.  
“Knock, knock.” Grian said, not wanting to intrude on any conversation that was going on.  
“Hey Grian, come in.” it was Doc. Grian entered. The structure of the tent itself was made of iron pipes in a round formation, with blue and yellow cloth that let in the light. In the middle were a few bean-bag chairs. One of them was in a bamboo frame, which Doc was sitting in. Ren was occupying as many of the bean bags as humanly possible, and even more than that, as they were piled on top of more bean bags than could possibly be necessary, putting Ren at a similar height to Doc.  
“Did you invite Grian to our hangout, Doc?” Ren asked. He was staring directly at the ceiling.  
“No, but he is here, so I figured he could come in”  
“Fair enough,” Ren reasoned. Doc sat up straighter in his bean-bag chair, facing Grian.  
“So what brings you to our humble bean-bag pile?” Doc picked up a bottle of berry juice from the floor and took a sip. Grian shifted back and forth a bit before smiling.  
“I guess I wanted to get to know you guys. I mean, I’ve been on the server for a few years and I don't know very much about you. We haven’t really interacted aside from the whole area 77 thing, and the civil war, and demise… you know what? I've caused quite a lot of things, haven't I?”  
“Yup” Ren agreed, he was now face down on the bean-bag chair.  
“What does your interuptingness want to know about our previous existence?”  
“Ah well, I dunno. I haven't gotten to know you guys very well. What was your life like before Hermitcraft? I know you guys met before you came to Hermitcraft, but that's about it.”  
“Oh well—” Doc began to explain.  
“If you're going to tell your entire life story, at least let me leave until you get to the good part.” Ren shifted around, sitting up.  
“You mean the you part.”  
“I think I’ve had enough of your gloomy teenage years,” Ren said as he left the tent.  
“Didn’t have teenage years, Ren.” Doc pulled the beanbags together, patting them, indicating for Grian to sit and handing him a bottle of berry juice.  
“So the story of my life, eh?” Doc leaned back into his bean bag chair.  
“Well, to start with I was made in a lab, experiment M77; that's where the name comes from. My creator, doctor Jacob Michaels, was, if not insane, evil—probably both.” Doc sighed. “He was attempting to create human-creeper fusions, soldiers that could explode on command, and hopefully survive the experience, not that he ever got to see the fruits of his labor. He was found out soon after my creation and taken away by that world’s admin to the Watchers know where. When the world staff were raiding Michaels’s lab they found me, and basically just gave me to the lab, Copper Labs, that Michaels had split off from.”

………………………………......  
Doc:

Doc remembered the confusion of his first few days of life. He had just been woken up by Doctor Michaels when the world staff had busted through the front door. Michaels had basically pushed Doc in front of the world staff and told him to blow them up. It hadn't worked, obviously. Doc would have had enough common sense not to blow himself up, even if he had known how at the time. In fact, after that, with the bows and swords pointed at him, Doc had knocked out Michaels with a slap to the face. After that he had been taken to the world staff’s base of operations and been interrogated. The next morning he had been just handed over to the people at Copper Labs, who didn't know what to make of him. After some deliberation, and tests, they had decided to have him work as a lab assistant.  
It had taken many of the scientists and doctors at Copper Labs a while to get used to him, and Doc could see how. But after a year or so Doc was just one more of the eclectic bunch that made up the lab staff. Doc had spent most of his time in the Copper Labs facility, but that wasn’t particularly uncommon. There was actually a small wing of the facility that had been renovated to serve as living spaces for a few members of the staff including Doc.  
Through his first year he expressed next to no creeper-like traits aside from his green skin and general skittishness around cats until the lab had taken in a new intern named Victoria. Copper Labs had taken on a few new members and interns while Doc had been around, but they tended to stay away from him mostly. They didn't avoid him, but compared to Victoria, they might as well have been allergic to his presence.  
Victoria had been… insistent. She had basically glued herself to him, asking questions. So, so many personal questions. Doc didn’t mind telling people about his past; most of the lab knew. The problem was that she didn't believe him. She would ask “where are you from?” or “why are you green?”. He would answer truthfully “I'm an experiment,” and she would think he was just being colorful. So she would continue following him around, asking questions and he would continue answering them.  
One day it all came to a head. Doc had been photocopying… something. He had been having a bad day, and Victoria had come to ask him for the hundredth time. And he had blown up at her, literally. Doc had let his frustration get the best of him.  
“M77, what's your real name? You’ve got to tell me sometime.”  
“I already told you—that is my real name.”  
“That's no one's name.” Victoria had reasoned  
“Well it's mine.” Doc had said  
“No it's not.” The printer had jammed, and an outside viewer could notice small white buds and flowers sprouting from the left side of his face and neck, as well as his right arm.  
“Yes, it is. I've told you that more times than I can count.” Doc’s voice had been slightly raised at this point, and frustration was visible on his face.  
“Uh.. M77?” Victoria said, noticing the flowers spreading across Doc’s skin. (she was probably inclined to believe him at this point). After that Doc could remember continuing, getting louder and angrier, just wanting her to stop asking him, just wanting to be left alone.  
And then Doc remembered exploding, his right arm and the left side of his face just gone.  
The damage had killed Victoria, but he had been left just standing there. His ears—well at that point, ear—was ringing. In a way, Doctor Michaels’s experiment had been a success in that regard. But, now Doc was standing in a room, wall covered in his own blood, unable to feel half of his face, the bones of his right arm lying on the floor.

Grian:

Grian stared at Doc as he took another sip of his beverage.  
“Hm, yeah.” Doc noted Grian’s gaze. “Well anyway, after that I was out of commission for a while. The staff at the lab was pretty insistent on me staying out of the workplace, both for my own health and for fear that that would happen again. So I spent the time working on this.” Doc tapped his right arm. “And figured out how to deal with the whole exploding thing. But no one wanted to let me back into the job. Until-”  
“I showed up!” Ren barged in.  
“That would be one way to put it.” Doc put his attention back to Grian. “Another way to put it would be that the people at Copper labs wanted to give me something to do, but they didn't want to give me something that mattered.”  
“You meeting me mattered plenty.”  
“Yes, but I don't think the random dude freaking out about growing wolf ears was particularly important to my boss.”  
“Neither was it particularly important to you at the time, if I recall.”  
“So I was a bit hesitant to half to deal with someone like you at the time. Sue me.”  
“I just might.”  
“You wouldn't.” Grian cleared his throat.  
“I’ll take it from here,” Ren offered  
“Sure.”  
“So I got cursed by a witch, right, and I was freaking out about it, so I went to Copper Labs. They did all kinds of stuff, although i'm not sure curses were their thing.”  
“They weren’t,” Doc Interjected  
“Anyway,” Ren continued, “the people at the front desk eventually handed me over to doc at my repeated insistence.”  
“You were basically having a breakdown in front of the front desk. I could hear it from my workshop.”  
“Soooooo, it ended up being Doc’s job to figure out exactly what the curse would do to me. As it eventually turned out it was just the tail and ears, but I was pretty freaked out at the time. Doc eventually got it figured out—”  
“And Ren stayed around even though he didn’t need to.”  
“I did need to. If I hadn’t, you would still be moping around Copper Labs calling yourself M77”  
“The name only stuck because you kept calling me Doc, and Xisuma thought it was my name.”  
“It's still stuck.”  
“Fair enough.” Doc gave in. “Anyway, after enough insisting, Ren got me to look for a server to join. I met Xisuma and a few years after I joined Hermitcraft, Ren came here as well. I guess that's what you wanted to know.”  
“I guess so. I should probably get going.” After a few goodbyes, Grian left the two men to their conversation. He felt weird about the whole situation. He didn’t know why. He pulled out his notebook, taking a few notes before flying off. It felt sort of wrong, being suspicious of everyone like this. He wished that he didn’t have to do this. He wished the watchers had just handled it themselves. Well he didn’t fully; he didn't want interruptions, not of any kind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter took me way to long. on another note I made an ask blog for this au: https://ask-forgotten-history-au.tumblr.com/  
> there is no art for this chapter, but I will say ive been working on designs for the watchers and its been fun. (also, grians eyes are red in this au)


	7. Time Part 1

Cleo:

Cleo was netherite mining. She had taken care to stay away from the lava and fire that filled the nether and had opted to dig out tunnels through the underside of the nether with good old fashioned explosives.  
Ancient debris. That was a silly name for something. She was ancient, and netherite was certainly much younger than her. She wondered how many future players would take the name at face value. There were many things in the world that were younger than her that had names like that. Things that looked old but simply weren't. Structures that looked old but weren't. Things that were actually old were quite rare. Though, realistically, not very many things could be old (things had only existed for about 300 years anyway).   
Cleo was becoming tired quite fast, again. It was inconvenient to say the least. She stopped mining and took a look at the communicator on her wrist. The time in the corner of the screen read 9:47 pm. That would be reasonable for basically anyone else, but she had slept the last two days, and that wasn’t very normal. But it would still not be very sensible to try and pull through the exhaustion.  
Cleo turned around, walking over the uneven ground left from the many explosions. She really shouldn't be spending this much time in the nether. Huh. Maybe that was the problem. It sort of made sense, and it sort of didn't. The updated nether was the new factor, but why would it have that sort of effect on her? She would have to do some kind of test, but that would take quite a while. Nevertheless, it would probably be necessary if this continued.

Cleo entered the lab under her base. 21 had been standing near the lift and glanced at Cleo’s arms as she entered, worried that he would have to chop off his arm. But Cleo seemed fine.  
“Heyya Cleo, what are you doing back here so soon?” 21 asked. Cleo walked past him, going further into the complex, where her bedroom was. She had a general living quarters in the lab, though it was fairly far into the complex as she didn’t often have a reason to visit. Most of her books were in her study, and she didn't need to sleep very often (well not normally). As she walked through the labs, she walked past many Joe clones who were engaged in a multitude of different activities, but all of whom paused as Cleo walked past.  
When Cleo got to her quarters it was 10:07. She didn't bother to turn on the lights as she entered; the undead could see fine in the dark. Were the lights to be turned on, the room she stood in could be considered cozy, if a bit abandoned. Cleo hadn't been there for quite some time, and it showed. She took off her boots, sitting down on a bench in the corner of the living room.  
Cleo entered her bedroom and sat down on the edge of her bed, or what could be considered a bed. To be honest, it was more of a stone slab with a few sheets and blankets piled on top. Most undead (those that did sleep) typically slept on something harder than a typical mattress (quite often it was sand or dirt, but Cleo found that this was both more comfortable, and cleaner).

Kiaro:

A week later Kiaro went to visit Void’s lab. The alternative was being pestered by her relatives to get a new outfit for the wedding. She had plenty of formal outfits already.  
She stood in the street outside of the door to the address Void had given her. She knocked on the door and waited. The door opened to reveal a man. He had strawberry blond hair (emphasis on the strawberry), fair skin, a lot of freckles, and solid red glowing eyes indicating that he was a seer. He was wearing a slightly formal outfit: a red coat, white undershirt, dark maroon pants, and black boots. As soon as he saw her he turned to shout back into the building.  
“What are you doing here?” the man asked.  
“Void invited me to come by whenever, I thought I would come by today.” Kiaro really hoped she hadn’t gotten the address wrong.  
“What's your name?”  
“Why do you need to know?”  
“I'm going to ask Void if he invited you,” the man said. Just then Void stepped up behind the man.  
“Oh hey Kiaro, you came! Garnet, next time you want to start interrogating someone like that, at least let them in.” Void was wearing a lab coat and looked excited to see Kiaro. With Void’s entrance, Garnet moved to the side for Kiaro to enter. Kiaro entered the room. It was fairly large, with doors all along the back wall, each marked with a different name. One was open. ”Hey, I want to show you something, I actually made a prototype of that idea you had for photosynthetic prosthetics.” Void went towards the open door, gesturing for Kiaro to follow. Garnet watched as they walked into Void’s lab. He sighed, dusted off the shoulder of his coat, and left through the door Kiaro had come in through.  
Void’s lab was giant. While there was certainly a section for traditional experiments, there was also a more study-like area, and a design lab, with all sorts of machines, some of which Kiaro recognised. Void walked over to a counter and grabbed a robotic arm off of it, then walked back over to Kairo, handing the arm to her.  
The arm was clearly robotic, with a dark green paneling material making the shell. She hefted it in her hands, looking at it from every angle.  
“ This is amazing, Void. How did you make this in a week?”  
“Hey, it was your idea, I just made it real. Ideas are the hard part.”  
“Ideas aren't the hard part; construction is. A idea is all well and good, but it’s the putting it to paper that's hard.”  
“For you I guess.” Void looked a little sheepish for a bit, but he lit up as he continued. “But I’ve sort of got the making stuff down.” He gestured across the room. “Do you want to see some of the stuff I’ve made before?”  
“I guess…” Kiaro shrugged. Void began to walk over to a corner of the room that was full of glass cases. He pointed to the things in the cases, explaining what he had made. A small clock that could be worn as a ring. A gun that shot bullets designed to instantly tranquilize someone, while also placing a tracker inside the target. A recipe for oatmeal raisin cookies that he insisted were scientifically proven to be the best oatmeal raisin cookies. And much more.  
“What exactly is your job?” Kiaro asked as Void was explaining a water filter he had made.  
“Oh, I’m an engineer.”  
“But... who do you work for?  
“Garnet” he smiled. “He reports directly back to Ezra.”  
“Oh…” that was not what she expected. Void was a seer; they were usually pretty important especially ones with black eyes, but that important? He was like in the top 100 most important people in the world then, right? “Should I be bowing to your greatness then?” Void chuckled a bit.  
“Bowing is completely unnecessary Kiaro. It's actually quite frustrating. Everyone either starts bowing to me, or they see me as far below them. Your sarcasm is quite a welcome change.”   
“Well, I’ll keep that in mind.”  
“Would you like some tea?” Void asked.  
“Sure.” Void led Kiaro to a living-room-like area of the giant room, gesturing to one of the seats. There was a white board with a few notes scribbled on it, and a coffee table. 

Cleo:

Huh, what was with her waking up when she saw a coffee table? Cleo looked around the room, blinking a few times. Everything looked dark. She could barely see the other furniture in the room. The room was dark, but Cleo should be able to see in the dark. ‘Should’ being the word. Why couldn't she?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it may be late but its still sunday! (sorry)  
> i'm getting a little exited now, getting into some interesting stuff, maybe. i might post some art for this tomorrow if i do, ill put it in a comment


	8. Time pt2

Cleo: 

This was wrong. Cleo blinked, looking around the room. Well, trying to. It was too dark to see. It was never too dark to see, not for her. She looked at her communicator: 5:31 am. Cleo stood up and walked over to the light switch, but the fog in her vision continued. Definitely not as bad, but still impaired.  
Cleo rubbed her eyes and blinked a few times, but to no avail. It was like looking at the world through thick fog. Cleo stood in the middle of the room, going through her options. She could freak out; it was a reasonable response to a situation like this, but wouldn't really help with anything. She could also go get help. Ask X if something was wrong with her code, or have Carol give her a check-up. She could try to go about her normal day, and hope it would get better. That would be a reasonable response for a normal human. But zombies and the undead in general did not heal particularly well without the assistance of magic or food.  
Food. Cleo was in fact kind of hungry, and while vision impairment was not a typical symptom of hunger, that would be a good place to start in any case.  
Cleo walked into her kitchen, pulling a bottle of Xp, and drank it. It was strange, you wouldn't think Xp had a flavor, but it very distinctly tasted like melon peel. Then Cleo froze. How did she know what melon peel tasted like? She hadn’t actually eaten very many things, since she didn't need to, and it could be quite the hassle. Of the many things that had ended up in her mouth over the years, melon peel wasn't one of them. Yet she could have sworn that Xp tasted like it.  
Cleo put the now empty bottle down on the counter and blinked a bit. The fog in her vision began to recede, and her dark vision came back, although not fully. That was weird. She stood in the silent darkness for a bit. While everything seemed fine now, she should probably be keeping notes on this kind of stuff in case anything else weird started happening. Rationalizing further, Cleo guessed that the idea of Xp tasting like melon peel was probably from a dream. She could have dreamed about eating melon peel at some point, and without a flavor reference, her brain had given it the flavor of Xp.

Cleo moved to one of the couches in the corner of the room, considering what to do with the day. She wanted to test the theory that the nether was causing her tiredness, and now vision fog. She had to figure out something to do. She could work on the zoo, but her heart wasn’t really in it. It then occurred to her that she had been wearing basically the same outfit for the last 70 years (except for Halloween costumes). That never bothered her before, but now she thought that maybe it was time for a change. Some of the other hermits seemed to change what outfits they wore regularly every few weeks; she probably should do the same every atleast decade. Unfortunately, Cleo wasn't much of a seamstress, which would make getting a new outfit quite hard. Grian was a tailor, wasn't he? Maybe she could ask him for help with that (it was probably a better idea than trying to sew something herself).

Cleo grabbed her elytra and rocketed off into the dawn light. The way to Grian’s base via the overworld was actually quite remote, as most of the journey was over empty desert and mesa. The trip across the server took longer than she had thought; the sun was shining down harshly on her skin when she landed in front of Grian’s giant mansion. Cleo hadn't visited Grian for quite some time, and while she had been told about its massive scale by some of the other hermits, she hadn't quite fathomed how large it actually was. She estimated that it was about two thirds of the way to build height.  
Cleo walked up to the large door and knocked a few times. She was about to try to find some louder way to alert Grian of her presence when the door opened. He looked a bit tired, but smiled when he saw her.  
“Hey Cleo, how are you doing?” Grian greeted her.  
“I'm fine. I was actually wondering if you could help me with something.”  
“Oh?” Grian cocked his head to the side.  
“You're a tailor, right? I know you made a new outfit for Ren back in Season 6.”  
“Yeah. Do you need me to make something for you”  
“ Yeah. I've been wearing the same thing for a few decades, and I thought it was time for a change.” Grian hesitated for a bit. “I can pay if you want.” Cleo offered.  
“No need.” Grian smiled. “Come on in so I can measure you.” Grian walked into his house, gesturing for Cleo to follow.

Grian sat Cleo down in a room with a few chairs, and a coffee table, then darted off into another room, coming back a few minutes later wearing a tailor's outfit, including a pair of sewing glasses. As Grian measured her, he started up some friendly conversation.  
“You’ve really been wearing the same thing for decades?”  
“Yeah, why did you think it was so tattered?”  
“I don't know, I just assumed it was part of the aesthetic, with the whole being a zombie thing.”  
“It is, but I think it's probably time for a change. You can only wear the same outfit for so long, and I think most people would say 70 years is a bit close.”  
“Seventy years? Have you had that thing your whole life?  
“Heaven no, I'm much older than this outfit.”  
“How old are you then?”  
“You wouldn't believe me if I told you.” Grian raised an eyebrow at this.  
“Try me.”  
“Two hundred and fifty-seven.”  
“That's… old.” there was a moment of silence. Grian put down his measuring tape.”so what kind of outfit are you thinking?”  
“I don't know, something practical that isn't partially falling apart?”  
“That's vague. I'll figure out something though.” Grian said, moving over to the closet in the corner of the room. “Come back in a few hours, and II’ll have something for you.”  
“Just a few hours?”  
“Yup!” Grian responded, he started humming as Cleo left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> its late again, sorry.  
> (also comments, especially theories give me life)


	9. Embroidery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to clear up a little bit of lore/world info right here before the chapter. being how aging works in my Au.  
> basically a person will spawn in, and age to about when they reach their prime, usually about 25, then drastically slow down in aging, resulting in an average life span of about 500 years, theoretically at least. since the world is only about 300 years old, Cleo's age is old, and quite possibly uncommon, but not impossible, or particularly unlikely.

Grian

Grian walked into the closet that was at the edge of the room. It led into a room that was less of a single closet and more of a door to an interdimensional closet hub. Grian’s closets were more of a network of portals and rooms containing basically everything he had that was clothing or clothing adjacent. That happened to include what was practically a store worth of garments he had made over the years (sorted by size). He ran his hand over the racks of clothing. He hadn't been in here for a long time (not since he had given Ren a makeover), and the absence of dust was more noticeable than ever. You would not think an absence of dust would be noticeable, but a room being spotless after years of being neglected felt strange.

Grian looked around, trying to find the stuff he had made that would fit Cleo. He pulled the garments off the rack that were the correct size (neglecting anything that had been made with a specific person in mind). With his arms full, Grian ran back into his house to get a better look at what he had grabbed. He didn’t really know what kinds of stuff Cleo liked. Theoretically he could just let her look through all of this stuff, but it didn’t seem like what she was expecting, and he doubted the fashion sense of a person who decided to get a new outfit because the old one was literally falling apart. He looked through the clothing seeing what caught his eye, the first one being a denim jacket embroidered with cyan roses.

He lifted up the jacket, studying the embroidery. Upon closer inspection, the stitches making up the flowers spelled out words in watcherscript, specifically the code that had made up the original cyan roses. That jacket had to be really old. It felt sort of strange to give it away to someone after so long. But on the other hand, there wasn't very much point in a jacket that spent all its time in a closet. He put the jacket with a dark blue sweater, dark blue jeans, and some blue boots to the side, then continued looking through the pile of clothes. He had made a lot of sweaters over the years.

Two hours later Grian had set aside a few outfits and fine tuned them down to the smallest accessories. He would let Cleo decide which one she wanted when she got back and let her try them on. He sat down on the couch and pulled out his notebook.  
And then the doorbell rang. 

Grian put the notebook into his inventory, and ran to the door.  
“Hey Cleo, come on in… again.” Grian opened the door.  
“Hi.” Cleo said with a small nod, then followed Grian back to the sewing room.

“So.” Grian said, gesturing to the three outfits on the table. “I assembled three outfits from the stuff I have. You can keep what you want. I’ll let you change in here; call me when you have decided.”  
“Ah,” Cleo said looking around. “I sort of thought you were gonna sew something new.”  
“I mean, I've got tons of stuff I’ve already made. Doesn’t really make sense to make a thing then never use it.”  
“How much stuff have you made to have three outfits that fit me just lying around?”  
“Way more than three outfits Cleo. Way more.” Grian said as he left the room.

\----------------

About 20 minutes later Cleo had called Grian back and was wearing one of the outfits. A black crop top, dark blue jeans, a cyan cardigan, and back boots. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail.  
“That suits you, Cleo.”  
“Thanks, although you did pick it, so thanks to you as well.”  
“Yeah. It's nice to see someone wearing the stuff I've made.”  
“How much stuff have you made?”  
“I don’t know exactly. I've got a whole room full of stuff.”  
“Really? How old are you? it must take a while to make that much clothing.”  
“I--”Grian thought for a bit. Telling the truth wasn’t an option. The watchers were the oldest thing, and to say that would break his cover completely. What made sense was how long he had had a cover. “I’m 25.”  
“You must have been very busy all that time then.”  
“Yeah, pretty much. You must have been in hermitcraft the whole time.”  
“Pretty much. This server's been active for what? 100 years now? I've been there for most of it. Since season 2”  
“May I ask what did you do before you joined hermitcraft?”  
“I had a single player world, experimented with a few mods, had a world with a few friends. Kind of generic stuff mostly. Nothing particularly special. I don’t remember that much of it to be honest. Time does that to ya.”  
“ I can imagine.” While Grian could imagine what it might be like to forget things like that, he did not actually have as much experience with memory loss as one would expect. The watchers kept logs of basically everything they did, even though they tended not to forget anything. In all honesty Grian had forgotten much more in the 25 years he had spent pretending to be a player than in the other 275 years of his existence. “Have you always been a zombie? Sorry if that's rude.”

“Don’t worry, it's not. I just woke up like this to answer your question. Just spawned in undead, actually buried a few feet underground. Very inconvenient.”  
“I bet.”  
“Anyway, I should probably get going.” Cleo said cheerfully, took a few steps. “Grian, you are going to have to show me to the door. Your house is literally a maze.”  
“Of course,” Grian said, leading Cleo through the house to the door.  
“Thanks for the clothes again, Grian. I really feel like I should pay you for these.”  
“Don’t worry about it! You’re doing me a favor just by wearing them.” Grian said, closing the door.

He walked back to the sewing room, picking up the rejected clothes and returning them to the interdimensional space that was his closet. Hanging up the clothes he ended up with the rose-embroidered jacket in his hands. In all honesty he was glad that Cleo had not kept the jacket. He looked at it, reached to hang it back up, then hesitated, choosing to put it on instead. It was actually a bit too big for him. He had to roll up the sleeves, revealing the golden yellow silk lining.

Grian moved back to the sewing room and sat down on the couch. He took out his notebook, opened it up, pulled out a pencil. He didn't think Cleo was Herobrine. That felt weird to think. Primarily because players don’t spawn in underground. And if someone was hiding, that wouldn’t be their cover story. Herobrine was certainly old enough to know that. But that did leave the question of why she had spawned in underground. He wondered if it had been a glitch that had never been reported, or if one of the other watchers had been experimenting with something that he wasn’t informed of. Anyway he felt like he should look into it. But that wasn’t his job. There was no problem, and he didn’t want to have to deal with that kind of stuff. That was why he was here on hermitcraft in the first place.

He was here to be a normal player, and yet he was having to investigate like this to keep that normality. If he wasn’t trying to do this, to be just a player, he could go look at the hermits’ code. He could find this out and move on without interruptions. But that would betray the normality he was protecting. So he was asking the hermits to tell him about themselves under a false pretense. In this other world, this imagined circumstance, he would be able to see this information and read it immediately, without consent, yet he wouldn’t feel this bad about it.  
Why wouldn’t he feel bad about it? Why would that be better? If it was better, why was he so against it? Grian knew the answer to that. But why did he have to be in this situation? Why couldn’t he just pretend to be a player without the other watchers bursting in? Why did the world have to put him in this situation? Why?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey (undisclosed character) look what you did! there was a perfectly good Grian and you gave it angst!  
> also, art: https://rose-icosahedron.tumblr.com/post/636173914762035200/look-cleo-drawn-for-my-au-but-generally  
> sorry i missed the posting last sunday, but i needed a break and there was school work  
> also, general question, would you, as my 'fans' prefer to be called petals, triangles, or victims?


	10. haitus

this is an announcement that this fic will be taking a hiatus for an undefined amount of time, ill probably pick it up again one day, but i shouldn't have started off with a project i planed to be this long.

sorry.


	11. this calls for a re-write

so, i'm not gonna continue writing this fic. i stopped writing it for a bunch of reasons. one was that i lost focus, but most of that was due to a few things.

i hadn’t been in the fandom much and didn't have a good grasp of the common tropes.headcanons and latched onto the first ideas a saw. it was also probably too long of a project that I didn't plan out enough.

so im wondering if people would be interested if i re-wrote it, i guess. take some of the core ideas, throw out the ones i didn't like.

it wouldn’t be a re-write, more of a different fic with a similar starting concept.

so, would you be interested in it? whether that's seeing me write a fic, or as someone who read the original.

if i'm gonna do this im gonna need support at some points when i feel like its not worth it to continue the project, but if I know there are people who would like to see a project like that from me ill start writing.

if I do write a new one, it will be a different fic, with a different file on ao3, but i'm up for a second try if you are all ready too.

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is no longer in production and will stay unfinished forever.


End file.
